The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal is stressing the d-word in the sixth edition of the Classical Spree and calling it a celebration of the 50th anniversary of that notable paragon of cosmopolitanism, Expo 67. Even the free Olympic Park blowout that opens the four-day fest on Aug. 10 – an 80-minute highlights package of Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess with Marie-Josée Lord and Will Liverman in the title roles and narration in French by actor André Robitaille – has an aura of diversity around it.

“Music, art and culture have always lent cohesion to our diversity and inspired a common set of values in the context of our differing lives,” Kent Nagano says in a philosophical introduction to the programming.

Among the concerts led by Nagano in the Maison symphonique are the titles The Fascination of Asia (music by Toru Takemitsu, Tan Dun and Puccini with the Korean soprano Sumi Jo), A Mediterranean Journey (Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with American guitarist Sharon Isbin) and The Sound of Jazz (Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with local hero Charles Richard-Hamelin).

Off-the-beaten-path programs in smaller Place des Arts venues are Persian Perspectives (Trio Regard Persan, made of classical Iranian musicians), Griots and Kora (West African music featuring voice and a variant of the lute) and Travel Through Time, an Expo 67 retrospective featuring of-the-period electronic music by Francis Dhomont, Otto Joachim, Gilles Tremblay and Iannis Xenakis. Robert Normandeau presents the program, which also includes a piece by himself.

Kent NaganoJohannes Simon /
Getty Images

Listeners who prefer Western classics need not despair. Nagano and the French pianist Jean-Philippe Collard collaborate in Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand. German violinist Veronika Eberle and Italian cellist Luigi Piovano are soloists in Brahms’s Double Concerto. Collard, Austrian pianist Till Fellner and Jo each gives a recital in the Cinquième Salle – an intimate venue for artists of this calibre.

There are family concerts and programs featuring recent OSM and CMIM competition winners. Pianist Lorraine Desmarais gives a solo tribute to three jazz performers – including Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington and Thelonius Monk – who appeared at the World Festival of Entertainment in conjunction with Expo 67.

A specialty program reasonably described in the brochure as “far-out” includes Beethoven’s Egmont Overture in a transcription for small ensemble along with Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet, Encounters (for violin and bassoon) by the jazzy Austrian composer Gernot Wolfgang and Poulenc’s Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon.

The title of the program, “Elvis is Dead,” is inspired by Dead Elvis, a bassoon concerto by the busy American composer Michael Daugherty. Whether Dead Elvis is notable for anything other than its offensive title is a question best answered after the concert. Stéphane Lévesque of the OSM is soloist.

The bassoon is something of a subplot in the festival. Carlo Colombo, an acclaimed bassoonist from Lyon, will play a role in the “Elvis” concert as well as a new Concerto Grosso for four bassoons, contrabassoon and orchestra commissioned by the OSM from the respected Montreal popsmeister Simon Leclerc. This work is premiered in the Maison symphonique in what will undoubtedly be a well-attended family concert headlined by Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf with Robitaille giving the French narration.

A scene from the 1961 musical West Side Story, screening in August. (AP Photo/Courtesy MGM Home Entertainment)AP

Also likely to please the masses are free outdoor “Cinema by Starlight” broadcasts on the Esplanade of Place des Arts. The 1961 movie version of Bernstein’s West Side Story is projected on Aug. 11 and a Metropolitan Opera performance of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is seen on Aug. 12.

There is a kicker the following morning, also led by Nagano: The concluding sequence of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with seven local choirs and organist Jean-Willy Kunz filling in for the orchestra. This “Ode to Joy” program will also involve choral selections by the individual choirs as led by their respective chorus masters.

There are other events in and around Place des Arts, including talks, demonstrations, instrument displays and a Saturday morning yoga lesson on the PdA Esplanade. Yoga at PdA? Hey, I’m there. Paid indoor concerts are humanely priced around $20 or $40. Listeners 17 and under pay $10. Go to www.osm.ca.

***

Demarais in a jazz role is not surprising. Next season she will be featured less predictably as soloist is a new concert work of her own devising and in Ravel’s Concerto in G with the Orchestre symphonique de Laval under Alain Trudel. Another interesting OSL program in 2017-18 is a tribute to Glenn Gould featuring a new work by Kelly-Marie Murphy and Richard-Hamelin playing Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 – the work that inspired Leonard Bernstein in 1962 to issue a spoken disclaimer to the New York Philharmonic audience because he and Gould could not agree on tempos.

Music director of the OSL for a decade, Trudel was treated to an onstage birthday cake last week in Salle André Mathieu before a performance of Shotakovich’s Fifth Symphony, which this renovated auditorium a few steps from the Montmorency métro station accommodated reasonably well. Seniors are predominant but school-agers add to the family vibe. Go to www.osl.qc.ca.

***

Four hundred, maybe five. It was hard to judge the number of evacuees during the first of two OSM performances of A Quiet Place, Bernstein’s ill-starred opera of 1982, led by Kent Nagano in a trimmed-down chamber version of 90 minutes by Garth Edwin Sunderland that will emerge eventually as a Decca recording. I was in the parterre and could see only the constant filing-out in front of me. One presumes a slow-motion stampede was under way also in the upper levels.

Part of the problem was the bait-and-switch. Many people were drawn to the Maison symphonique (notably, on the day of the 375th anniversary celebration at the Bell Centre) by the promise of West Side Story, which was represented by only three numbers given as pre-intermission appetizers with piano accompaniment (along with bits from Trouble in Tahiti and a bracing performance by soprano Claudia Boyle of Glitter and be Gay from Candide).

As for A Quiet Place, the libretto by Stephen Wadsworth remains a hard-to-follow tangle of family squabbles made all the less coherent by the psychotic episodes of Junior (baritone Gordon Bintner), who is by some accounts supposed to represent Bernstein himself.

All the same, the music had a concentration and integrity that might reflect Bernstein’s “late style.” Would the piece work in a staging that clarified the domestic mess? At least it can work as an audio experience with music in the foreground. This is the way operas have been appreciated for decades. I can also imagine an effective orchestral suite.

OSM concertmaster Andrew Wan, who contributed some silky violin solos to the collective effort, reflected on the exodus thus: “I am proud to be a part of a band that does not resort to playing things week in and week out that are easy sells.”

Program annotator Marc Wieser gave a short speech about A Quiet Place before the second performance. Reportedly the exits were fewer than on the night before.

***

The Opéra de Montréal attracted about 12,000 fans to the Percival Molson Memorial Stadium simulcast last week of Puccini’s La Bohème. The company also sold out four performances in Salle Wilfrid Pelletier. And it took money to see the PdA performances. The stadium simulcast was free.

Opera is not hard to give away in Montreal. Police estimated an attendance of 33,000 for an OdM simulcast of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on the plaza of Place des Arts in June 2008. This is approximately the crowd that the OSM attracts to its abridged opera performances in August in Olympic Park. (Keep in mind that Porgy and Bess, unabridged, runs longer than four hours.)

Still, the attendance champ for paid operatic events in Montreal probably remains the pair of performances of Verdi’s Aida – live, not projected – that the International Opera Festival company mounted, complete with elephants, in the Olympic Stadium in June 1988. Exact numbers were hard to come by, but the organizers said a few days before the Thursday première that 10,000 of 70,000 tickets for both performances remained. Assuming higher sales for Saturday, attendance on that night probably exceeded 40,000 – at what were, for the time, high prices.

This Week's Flyers

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.